What other political dramas need to become movies? It stuns me that we’ve never had a good Andrew Jackson biopic (Sean Penn playing Jackson-as-president, Jonah Hill as Nicholas Biddle), or an Alexander Hamilton film that turns Jefferson into a sleazy antagonist.

Alexander Hamilton. Yes. Bingo.

Ten years ago or so, my wife and I, wandering in upper Manhattan, came upon The Grange, the modest (by the standards of his Virginia-grandee contemporaries and rivals) house Hamilton conceived, built, and, for a couple of years before the duel with Burr in 1804, inhabited. Naturally, we went for a visit.

The Grange, which had come into the possession of the National Park Service in the nineteen-sixties, was tidy, a little grungy, and minimally fitted out—a few pieces of picked-up furniture, a few display panels. Still, its slightly asymmetrical proportions and light-filled main rooms gave a sense of Hamilton’s aesthetic, an interestingly modern kind of classicism. (The house has since been moved to a new location and done up properly; it was reopened to the public two months ago.)

Our little tour group included—besides us, a couple of pre-teen kids from the neighborhood, and a fact-filled Park Ranger for a guide—a scholarly-looking, somewhat heavyset man in blue jeans, a leather jacket, black-rimmed glasses, and a salt-and-pepper beard. He looked familiar, somehow, and after a few minutes I figured it out: Francis Ford Coppola. Because I’d actually met him once, long before—in 1979, at the White House family theatre, where he’d come to stun President Carter and some staffers and guests with a pre-release rough cut of “Apocalypse Now”—I was emboldened to ask him, after the tour, if he was planning to make a film about Hamilton. He said it was one of the things he was thinking about.

Of all the Founders’ lives, Hamilton’s was the most garishly cinematic. Consider these elements: born in the West Indies (the film could open with a sweeping aerial shot of palm trees and blue water); spends his childhood among black people; is reared in struggling, humble circumstances; attends a Jewish school after the Church of England school denies him admission because of his illegitimate birth; orphaned at around twelve when his mother dies; is so impressive a youth that funds are raised to send him to the northern mainland to further his education; studies at Kings College (now Columbia); becomes a student revolutionary pamphleteer and, at twenty, a revolutionary soldier; rises to be George Washington’s most trusted aide de camp, almost like a son to the childless general; hurts Washington’s feelings by leaving his staff to seek, and find, battlefield glory; friend of Lafayette; incredibly handsome, dashing, and charming; successful and imaginative politician; writes call for Constitutional Convention; still in his mid-thirties, is made President Washington’s secretary of the treasury and ghosts his farewell address; mired in spectacular sex scandal, foils cuckolded husband’s blackmail by making full disclosure; maneuvers to stop Adams’s election as President but is appointed by Adams to command the army anyway; jousts with Jefferson; back in New York, still in his forties, founds the Evening Post; the duel; the fatal wound; the deathbed farewells.

How can this miss?

Given the dramatic richness of early American history, it’s a puzzle and a disgrace that Hollywood has produced so few decent movies about the makers of that history. Yes, there’s Merchant-Ivory’s 1995 “Jefferson in Paris.” (Not bad, despite the gross miscasting of Nick Nolte in the title role.) “The Madness of King George” (1994) was terrific, but its connection to American events is tenuous to the point of nonexistence. “The Patriot” (2000) is simple-minded, ahistorical bang-bang. That’s about it for the Revolution.

The Civil War period fares better—a lot better quantitatively, a little better qualitatively, but still pretty pathetic compared to the possibilities that the actual history offers. Ed Zwick’s “Glory” (1989), about the 54th Massachusetts, is the best and truest of the lot, as far as I know. Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” (2002) was a disappointment, superb art direction notwithstanding. Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” (last April) was better than I’d expected, though not as good as I’d hoped. As for “Birth of a Nation” (1959) and “Gone with the Wind” (1939), let’s just say they have their problems. They may be milestones in the history of the cinema, but they’re millstones around the neck of the history of the United States. I have high hopes for Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” due sometime after next year’s election, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Honest Abe and a slew of other fine actors (e.g., David Strathairn as Seward), and based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s absorbing “Team of Rivals.” We’ll see.

As for Hamilton, he used to be a bugaboo to people like me. As a kid I took it for granted that he was a bad guy, even if he did start the Post, which until 1976 was the voice of New York liberalism. I mean, Hamilton hung out with bankers, was Jefferson’s nemesis, had monarchist tendencies, etc. But I’ve come to admire him and his politics. He detested slavery, preferred urban sophistication to the idiocy of rural life, championed an energetic national government (he wanted to replace the states with administrative districts, an excellent idea), and understood that commerce and industry were going to make America greater than dirt farming, cow herding, and cotton picking ever could. The man even raised taxes!

IMDb.com tells me that somebody did make a Hamilton bio-pic back in 1931, but apparently it was dreadful beyond belief. I have no idea if Coppola really gave serious consideration to making another. But I do wish somebody would.

Meanwhile, for solace, we have red wines from Coppola’s vineyards. His claret is quite good. His “Rosso,” which can be had for little more than ten dollars a bottle, may not be the liquid equivalent of “Apocalypse Now” or “The Godfather,” but it does very nicely for weeknight dinners at home.

Portrait of Hamilton by John Trumbull, 1806.

Hendrik Hertzberg is a senior editor and staff writer at The New Yorker. He regularly blogs about politics.